Horse cars first: the South Bend Railway Company of 1885 and the Van Depoele electric experiment

1882–1890 · AT POINTER SIZE, AS ORDERED — NONE OF IT EVER REACHED GRANGER

The lineage Transportation inherits begins with a horse: the South Bend Railway Company, from which TRANSPO reckons its descent without a break, is dated 25 May 1885 in the corporation's own lineage as carried by CPTDB, and Wikipedia has a horse-drawn wagon moving people up and down Washington Avenue that day as "the start of official public transportation in South Bend." CERA Bulletin 104 fixes the inauguration two days later: "On May 27, 1885, a small single truck horse car painted black and white was operated on Washington Street by the South Bend Railway Company to inaugurate street car service there." Founding against first run — both dates printed whole. The South Bend & Mishawaka Street Railway Company then built two lines between the cities, one on each side of the St. Joseph River, its horse cars running in a rural setting along the side of the road through open country — the closest animal-powered transit ever came to farm ground like Granger's, and it passed on the river roads, not into the townships.

The first-electric experiment happened on Michigan Street, its dates in conflict, all printed: CERA Bulletin 104 records that later in 1885 the Belgian Charles J. Van Depoele "demonstrated his trolley system here, but not too successfully and idea was passed by." Marlette's Electric Railroads of Indiana (1959) supplies the course: a first Indiana electrification attempt at South Bend in 1882, when a car moved only a few feet before its current dissipated into the ground; then, "on November 15, 1885, the first successful operation of an electric car in Indiana occurred when another South Bend car ran on Michigan Street from the 500 block north to one-and-a-half miles south of Washington Street," Van Depoele himself in charge — technically a success, economically a failure, the line reverting to mule power early in 1886. A second summary of the same episode dates the start November 14, 1885, on a two-and-a-half-mile line with four small cars of five horsepower and one of ten; Van Depoele's obituary (Mechanical News, 1 Oct. 1892) gives the small cars seven horsepower, the large one ten in both. CERA Bulletin 132 rounds the season to October 1885 — "arguably North America's first, in major public street, electric street railway" — and adds that the merchants would not let the railway clear snow, the line reverting "to horse cars until June 1890 when part of system was electrified," this time for good. The experiment's ground is a South Bend city street some seven miles from the CDP line; it is carried at pointer size because the whole Granger transit test descends from this company, and for no other reason.